


Awkward Moment #264

by Icka M Chif (mischif)



Category: Dragons: Riders of Berk (Cartoon), How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Genre: Assassination, Attempted Murder, Gen, Murder, Sabotage, Sheep & Goats, Vikings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-19
Updated: 2012-11-19
Packaged: 2017-11-19 01:43:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/567654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mischif/pseuds/Icka%20M%20Chif
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone's been trying to destroy Berk. Gobber takes care of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awkward Moment #264

* * *

  
[Awkward HTTYD Moment #264:](http://awkwarddragons.tumblr.com/post/34361779386/awkward-moment-264-the-awkward-moment-when-you)  
_The awkward moment when you find out that Yes, Gobber Will Kill You if he thinks he absolutely has to._  


  


* * *

"'Allo, Mildew."

The skinny cankerous old man jumped at Gobber's quiet words, his sheep bleating in surprise. "Gobber!" Mildew spun, one hand clutching his chest, stopping just outside his front door. "You nearly have me a heart attack!"

"Och, and what a pity that would have been." Gobber drawled, shifting his weight. It certainly would have made his life much easier.

"What are you doing here?" Mildew's craggy eyebrows came down over his narrowed hook nose, walking over to where Gobber was standing, next to the cliff’s edge, overlooking the ocean. "This is MY house!"

"That's right, it tis." Gobber agreed easily. "Which is why I came all the way here ta talk ta you."

"Couldn't it wait until morning?" Mildew snapped, his staff thumping against the cold frozen ground. "Poor old man like myself needs his beauty sleep you know. If I wanted annoying people dropping in at all times of night, I'd have my house down with the rest of them. I _like_ my privacy!"

"And such a nice quiet spot it is too." Gobber agreed, tapping his chin with the back of his hooked hand. "No one around within shouting distance. Just the two o' us and yer sheep. Just the kind o' place for a good... private... chat."

Mildew paused, as if finally catching on to fact that it was _Gobber_ there, and not some random villager. "So you're here on business then?" His expression turned shrewed, calculating.

"Oh, aye." Gobber nodded, pleased that Mildew was getting on the right train of thought. “Y’see, it’s come to Gothi's attention that Berk’s been under a lot of attacks lately, and something must be done aboot it.”

“At last!” Mildew let out a cackle. “Someone else has finally seen the light! It’s those blasted Dragons! Stoick won’t listen to me, but with you and Gothi-”

“Oooh. It’s nae the Dragons.” Gobber shook his head. "Although fer the thing for the life of me I cannot understand is why anyone thought they could get away with it.”

“Get away with what?” Mildew asked, just a bit of a wary note in with his sourness.

“Killin’ the village.” Gobber said simply. “First there was the food stores... True, Gronkles like the occasional cabbage with their rocks, and they’re all willin’ ta try bread, but they’re mostly fish eaters. And none o’ the dragons round the village would enter a strange buildlin’, too much like a trap. We woulda starved to death, this close ta winter, if it weren’t fer the Dragons.”

It wasn’t an exaggeration at all, Berk only had a short growing season and they had to take advantage of everything they could during the warm season to prepare for the long snows that buried the islands. And now that they Dragons lived with them, that meant more, and larger stomachs to feed during that cold season. The lack of food could have meant a long slow lingering death for all of them.

Mildew merely scoffed, waving off the concern. “Bah.”

“But the thing of it is-” Gobber drawled. “-There were a lot of tracks ‘round the stores after they were destroyed. Only a few allowed in and out, rather strange, yes?”

“So someone went for a snack.” Mildew waved it off. “Like that’s a crime.”

“True.” Gobber agreed. “But then there were the bit about the boots. Zippleback’s never shown an interested in boots before, nor after. Fact, they don’t care much fer the stench at all. And poor Barf and Bletch were actin’ rather slow the rest o’the day, like they was drugged.”

Not to mention the strange tracks left behind. Gobber had tracked a lot of Dragons in his time, but none that left such perfect claw marks in patches of snow. The swaying tails usually wiped most of them out.

“Hah.” Mildew snorted. “Like who could explain Dragons?”

Hiccup could, given time to observe and understand. The boy’s empathy with the giant beasts was a wonder to behold.

“Such as how a Monstrous Nightmare would go Berserk in the Great Hall without turning into a flaming ball o’rage.” Gobber said, reaching behind him and pulling a stick from where he’d tucked in the back of his vest. A very strange stick it was too, with four claws tied to it to look like Monstrous Nightmare talons.

Gobber had noticed afterwards that the tapestries were only ruined where they depicted Dragons as well. Odd, that.

Mildew froze, his eyes very large and wide. “Where did you get tha-? I mean, that’s a very interesting looking back scratcher, isn’t it?”

“Aye, it tis. I got it the same place I got me boots.” Gobber stuck out his bad leg, with the Zippleback leg boot was tied to it. It was a bit of a tight squeeze on his good leg though, the boots had been made for someone with smaller feet. “It’s amazing what you find with a borrowed Night Fury doin’ the diving. They do love the deep water fish. And any strange things they might find down there.”

“Interesting.” Mildew swallowed, tittering slightly as he shifted away from Gobber. His sheep bleated nervously as it was almost stepped on.

“Oh, not nearly as interestin’ as them tracks around the Armoury after it blew. Coincidentally, leaving us weaponless fer when Alvin the Treacherous makes his first appearance in nigh a decade.”

A bit too coincidental for Gobber’s tastes. And Stoick’s. And Gothi’s.

And Gobber had been around enough Dragon Fire to recognise it, and the lack there of. Night Fury fire was especially distinctive. So was the scent strong of pitch and oil on the remains of the armoury, never mind that both were usually stored with the food, since they had multiple uses.

It took a lot to pry Toothless from Hiccup’s side. Usually it required a threat towards Hiccup or Berk to pull the beast’s attention away.

“It’s a very distinctive track ye got there.” Gobber poked Mildew’s staff with the fake talons. He wasn’t Berk’s best tracker for nothing. “Only one other person in the village walks with a staff, and Gothi don’t come down all that often. Not nearly as much as you suddenly have, now that we’ve made peace.”

“You’ve got not proof.” Mildew sneered, baring his few yellowed teeth. “Merely speculations.”

“Aye, just like with ye and the Blue Oleanders.” Gobber admitted, rolling his shoulders in a shrug as he put the talons back in his vest. “But the thing o’ it tis, I don’t need proof that you’ve actively been tryin’ ta kill everyone in Berk.”

“... You don’t?” Mildew’s eyebrows arched up in surprise.

“Naw. This was just a courtesy.” Gobber reached out, patting Mildew on the back, his fingers brushing the heavy ornate axe that Mildew carried around with him before letting his hand rest on Mildew’s bony shoulder. “So that when ye see Hel, y’can tell the Goddess o’ Death precisely why yer in her realms.”

“Wh-” Mildew had barely enough time to form the word before Gobber swung, the rock attached to his left arm striking the old man on the head with a hollow cracking sound. Gobber clamped his hand on Mildew’s shoulder, pulling his arm back, then flinging the skinny old man over the edge of the cliff, into the ocean. Mildew’s staff fell after him.

There was just enough light from the half moon to see the water swallow him up. Gobber waited a moment, to see if Mildew would come back up, but the axe on his back was most likely enough to sink his body below the waves, for the sea life to feed on.

Not that it mattered if Mildew did survive, he wouldn’t be welcome back on Berk’s shores, and the old man was crafty enough to realise that. If not, Gobber would see to it then. There were a lot of cliffs in Berk.

He spotted Mildew’s sheep, who was staring over the edge of the cliff with a panicked expression. “Hmm.” He reached down and picked up the sheep by the horns, staring at it speculatively for a moment. It stared back at him, eyes wide and round in fear. A potential loose end there, Mildew’s sheep was strangely wily. Course, considering that Mildew considered the sheep to be a fourth wife, there was good reason for that.

Yeah, he was going to need some really strong ale to wipe that image out of his brain.

“Alright, yer comin’ wit’ me.” He decided, carrying the sheep in one hand. The Main Hall could probably use a good mutton stew right now.

He started the trek home, leaving Dragon footprints in his wake. Mildew wasn't the only one with a distinctive footprint after all. And after everything the cankerous old bastard had put the Dragons though, Gobber liked to think of it as helping them to get a bit of their own back.

No one would suspect Dragon feet belonging to anything other than a Dragon, Mildew had already proved that. But still, these boots were going into the forge to be burnt into ash as soon as he got back.

He hummed to himself as he walked back, pleased with another job well done. And hopefully things would settle down a bit now. The life of a Viking living alongside Dragons was interesting enough as it was, without a member of the tribe trying to kill them all on a regular basis.

-fin-

**Author's Note:**

> * * *
> 
> My brother Sean is Gobber. He even admits it.  
> As we were watching the Riders of Berk. Sean kept demaning to know why no one had killed Mildew yet.  
> So if Gobber is Sean, and Sean thinks Mildew should be dead, then Gobber prolly thinks that Mildew should be dead.  
> Asked Sean how he would do it and got back a very dead pan look. "They're Vikings. They're not subtle. There's Looooooots of Cliffs".  
> Which is how it came around that Gobber threw Mildew off a cliff. Sean approves.
> 
> -Sadly, I think it says a lot about how long I spent in the Detective Conan fandom that killing people off is soothing....


End file.
